ARMCHAIR GENERAL
Steve Bannon’s Long Love Affair With War
Steve Bannon, the National Security Council’s newest member, has long been obsessed with waging wars.
Asawin Suebsaeng
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG

01.30.17 10:00 PM ET
Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s White House chief strategist, was already set to become one of the most powerful people on the planet—even before Trump appointed him to the National Security Council last weekend.
Those who have known Bannon for years, and before he ascended to executive power, describe a man almost obsessed with military history, guerilla warfare, and the general art of war and nationalist foreign policy.
In his Hollywood days, Bannon could easily play war, writing vast landscapes of warfare and conflict into his scripts, sometimes set in outer space.

Thanks to Donald J. Trump, Bannon now could get to do it for real.
That’s because in a presidential memorandum this past weekend, Trump gave his chief strategist a permanent seat at the National Security Council table, while military and intelligence leaders were effectively downgraded. The move to elevate Bannon, a purely political adviser, was unusual to provoke outcry from even fellow Republicans.

For instance, Bannon has very limited experience in U.S. government, and has little relevant experience for the position. Bannon did serve seven years in the Navy several decades ago, before making his name in the private sector, conservative Hollywood, and then politics.

“This is literally the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened,” a former Hollywood associate of Bannon’s (who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, describing Bannon as “vindictive”) told The Daily Beast when discussing the new national-security position.
“He constantly used military terms, used military terms to describe people who worked for him… like, ‘grunts,’” one former Breitbart staffer recalled. “He always spoke in terms of aggression. It was always on-the-attack, double down... macho stuff. Steve has an obsession with testosterone.”
It’s a habit that will likely continue into his time in the executive branch. The New York Times reported that last week’s avalanche of Trump of executive orders was primarily hatched by Bannon and his team, and doubled as an effort “at disorienting the ‘enemy.’”

“If there’s one sort of movie theme that encapsulates Steve Bannon’s philosophy on this, it’s that line from Team America: World Police: ‘You have balls—I like balls,’” Ben Shapiro, former Breitbart editor-at-large, said.
Bannon and a spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on this story. He has, however (as The Daily Beast previously reported), described himself as a “Leninist,” with regard to his goals of political insurrection.
“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too,” Bannon said at a book party in Washington, D.C., in November 2013. “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Lenin isn’t the only communist military or political victor who Bannon seemed to admire, for tactics and ruthlessness, if not leftist ideology. Bannon did not write very many articles at Breitbart, but one of the pieces that bears his byline is an October 2013 obituary for the “‘Red’ Napoleon” of the Vietnam War: Gen. Võ Nguyên Giáp, a famous commander of the Vietnam People’s Army who (like Bannon) once worked in journalism before defeating entrenched establishment powers.
“Giap’s tenacity and ruthlessness became his trademarks as he fought two of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries,” Bannon wrote.
You can also find Bannon’s affection for military and strategic ruthlessness in what he reads. According to two of Bannon’s former friends from his West Coast days, two of his favorite books are Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the hugely influential ancient Chinese text on military strategy, and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. The latter tells the story of a holy war to establish dharma.

Julia Jones, Bannon’s longtime Hollywood writing partner and former close friend, recalls seeing him excitedly flipping through both books, and talking about them lovingly and often. She would frequently see various “books all over [Steve’s place] about battles and things,” among his clutter of possessions and interests. (Late last year, Jones—who identifies as a “Bernie Sanders liberal”—had a falling out with Bannon due to his work on the Trump presidential campaign, a role that she said absolutely “disgusted” her.)
“Steve is a strong militarist, he’s in love with war—it’s almost poetry to him,” Jones told The Daily Beast in an interview last year, well before Trump won the election and Bannon landed his new job. “He’s studied it down through the ages, from Greece, through Rome... every battle, every war… Never back down, never apologize, never show weakness… He lives in a world where it’s always high noon at the O.K. Corral.”
Jones said that Bannon “used to talk a lot about dharma—he felt very strongly about dharma... one of the strongest principles throughout the Bhagavad Gita.”
She also noted his “obsession” with the military victories and epic battles of the Roman Empire’s Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar. But a personal favorite of Bannon’s was the subject of the Peloponnesian War fought between Athens and Sparta.
“He talked a lot about Sparta—how Sparta defeated Athens, he loved the story,” Jones said. “The password on his [desktop] computer at his office at American Vantage Media in Santa Monica was ‘Sparta,’ in fact.”
This is the mindset of Trump’s top White House aide who just earned himself a seat at the table on the National Security Council. Regarding foreign policy and national security, Bannon has a few top priorities: He favors “aggressive military action” to defeat Islamist terror networks (action he thought was lacking during the Obama administration), and wants to build strong ties with far-right, nationalist political parties across Europe.

“He has long wanted to work with all of those parties, but that was only in promoting them with Breitbart,” a source close to Bannon told The Daily Beast in November. “Now he has the power of the White House to do it.”
Those who remain and become Bannon’s closest allies on issues of national security and foreign policy will most likely end up being whoever Bannon sees as tough and ruthless—much in the same way he sees himself and his preferred military leaders of history.
“‘Hammer’ was one of his favorite words,” a former Bannon associate (another person requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals) told The Daily Beast. “‘You’re a hammer,’ he’d say if he really liked you… if you’re ruthless.”

And it’s believed Bannon is rooting on Trump’s new antagonism of Republican leaders who have dropped him, a scorched-earth strategy that threatens a full-blown GOP civil war. Bannon previously called Republican Party’s congressional leaders, a bunch of “cunts” in 2014.
Before officially jumping aboard the Trump train, Bannon was a key figure in helping to mainstream racists who call themselves alt-right. "[Breitbart News is] the platform for the alt-right," Bannon once boasted.
It’s that alliance that has led Jones (who once wrote a Shakespearean hip-hop musical with Bannon, and who as recently as late August was calling him a close friend and “like family”) to reconsider her relationship with him.
"I don't want to know him anymore,” Jones told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “I don't care if I lose the friendship anymore.”
“I'm so disgusted at what Bannon has become,” she continued. “He's been behind Trump's campaign for over a year.”

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

Shh go to sleep. Trump is your president and I just told him to get you. Shh.

ya you right wingers hope the americans go to sleep so you can again steal america blind...

Din't trump do a holly crusade against Obama until about a week or month before this election saying he was a Muslum and or a not ligitimate born in america president. When is he going to release that so called info on his 8 year hate of Obama. Di you tell trump to go to sleep?

No this bannon creepo, boy he never went to sleep either, he put up more fake news on Obama then any one in the world, or at least he was in their in the race. So you have a problem with the truth..._________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

In his first weeks in office, President Trump has outlined plans to reorganize the White House’s National Security Council. This is in keeping with tradition: New presidents regularly reconfigure the council to fit their management style and national security priorities. Some of Mr. Trump’s plans, such as including the director of the C.I.A. as a full voting member of the council, are welcome.

But some of Mr. Trump’s other plans are unsettling and should be remedied as soon as possible — in particular the role he has given to his top political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon.

What’s more, according to Mr. Trump’s plans for the National Security Council, neither the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the president’s primary military adviser, nor the director of national intelligence, the president’s primary intelligence adviser, will be a permanent member of the council’s “principals committee,” a core group responsible for formulating policy.

President George W. Bush’s council, on which I served from 2007 through 2009 as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, was arranged similarly to Mr. Trump’s. But it bears noting that under President Obama, both the director of national intelligence and I were permanent members of the principals committee, codifying the importance of these positions.

In my experience there are very few — if any — meetings of the principals committee at which the input of the military and the intelligence community is not vital. With an increasingly belligerent Russia, tensions in the South China Sea and a smoldering Middle East, it makes little sense to minimize the participation of the professionals leading and representing these two groups.

The Trump White House insists that the new organizational structure does not downgrade the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the director of national intelligence. (The White House and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have both said that General Dunford will fully participate in the council’s duties.) If this is true, the administration should clarify that by making them permanent members of the principals committee. That would send a strong signal that Mr. Trump will still take seriously the military and intelligence community.

The second much needed adjustment to Mr. Trump’s arrangement of the council is the removal of Mr. Bannon from the principals committee. Putting aside for a moment Mr. Bannon’s troubling public positions, which are worrisome enough, institutionalizing his attendance threatens to politicize national security decision making.

The security council was formed in 1947 to serve a unique role in our government. It facilitates and coordinates, providing a forum through which federal agencies discuss and debate policy and, ultimately, provide counsel to the president about how best to keep the American people safe. At N.S.C. meetings, representatives from the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the intelligence community and other agencies speak freely and critically about the full breadth of options available to the United States. Those discussions can get heated at times. They can certainly get territorial. But they seldom get political — nor should they.

Mr. Bush understood this, as did his successor. As has been widely reported, Mr. Bush barred Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, from council meetings. And while I remember David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s political adviser, attending meetings early in that administration, he did not vote or otherwise engage in the discussion.

Having Mr. Bannon as a voting member of the principals committee will have a negative influence on what is supposed to be candid, nonpartisan deliberation. I fear that it will have a chilling effect on deliberations and, potentially, diminish the authority and the prerogatives to which Senate-confirmed cabinet officials are entitled. They, unlike Mr. Bannon, are accountable for the advice they give and the policies they execute.

Consistent though Mr. Bannon’s presence may be with the predilections of our new president, it results in a blurring of presidential responsibilities — Republican Party leader and commander in chief — that is unhealthy for the republic.

I’m perfectly aware that political concerns color the national security decisions that any president makes. The invasion of Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, air operations over Libya, sanctions on Russia and, of course, the decision not to strike Syria after President Bashar al-Assad crossed Mr. Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons were all informed — if not dominated — by political calculations.

But those decisions were made outside the confines of the Situation Room, where the security council meets. I cannot remember a single instance during my four-year stint as chairman of the Joint Chiefs where it was otherwise. That’s the way it should be.

Every president has the right and the responsibility to shape the security council as he sees fit. But partisan politics has no place at that table. And neither does Mr. Bannon.

Michael G. Mullen, a retired United States Navy admiral, was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011.

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

another mirror clone of Bannon... racist and all. This one sounds more like a canadian uneducated idiot that posts on this forum... the only canadian i have dealt with that is so stupid, but he admits he is not educated and hates educated people...

funny they even post his family and friends quotes how racist he is...

Stephen Miller’s Liberal Family Is Publicly Wrestling With His Role In The Trump Administration

Quote:

“Young Mister Miller did his best Goebbels impression. Seig Heil!”

Quote:

Some of Stephen Miller’s family members have a problem with the Trump administration as well as their relative’s role in it and have been making their feelings known on their personal Facebook pages.

“With all familial affection, I wish Stephen career success and personal happiness, however I cannot endorse his political preferences,” Miller’s uncle David S. Glosser wrote in a lengthy comment on the Johnstown, Pennsylvania newspaper Tribune-Democrat’s Facebook page in November, in response to a story about Miller’s roots in the area. Stephen’s mother, Miriam (Glosser) Miller, who is David’s sister, grew up in Johnstown with her family.

“The Glosser family escaped Europe as dirt poor immigrants, joined the community, built businesses, and honestly sold goods to their fellow Johnstowners,” Glosser said. “My nephew and I must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know.”

Other members of Miller’s extended maternal family chimed in on the post, one even noting that at least they did not share the Trump adviser’s last name.

21 Facts That Explain Exactly Who Stephen Miller Is
The new Trump mouthpiece has been like this for a long time.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet February 17, 2017
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Photo Credit: YouTube

Even among the right-wing ideologues doing the actual presidenting in this administration, Stephen Miller stands out for the copious amounts of Kool-Aid he mainlines. Speaking to the New York Times, a Trump team colleague described Miller as “fiercely loyal” to the president, “a true believer in every sense of the word.” Though he joined the campaign in its early days, penning many of the apocalyptic speeches that won fear-drunk Republican hearts and minds, Miller recently got a lot more visibility after a string of television appearances in defense of the Muslim ban. At each stop, Miller showed a flair for the dramatic: he lied, he dodged, he put on his best tyrant’s voice and proclaimed the executive branch above the law. It seemed contrived and forced, like a politically precocious, weasley teenager’s idea of how to command a crowd. According to those who know Miller’s history, that’s not so far off the mark.

Dating back to junior high school, Miller has been the unwavering right-winger now before us. Though the internet, and some of his family members, were quick to compare him to Joseph Goebbels, this reporter saw a resemblance to Roy Cohn—a Trump mentor—down to the sartorial details. Miller wears retro skinny suits, only recently ditched a chain-smoking habit and has the kind of cockiness that reads as unexamined, unsympathetic self-hatred. His barked orders and put-on baritone are all part of the package, and can strike an observer as funny. At least until you remember this guy is trying to turn the country into an all-white gated community.

The Trump administration is the natural place for Miller to end up. He’s been writing racist, anti-immigrant rants for half his life and he’s only 31. He’s worked for some of the most deplorable U.S. politicians out there, only to become the voice for the worst of all. By all accounts, he is as terrible—and dangerous—as he seems, which is why he’s no laughing matter. And in that way, he is exactly like his boss. As one of his high school classmates told the Daily Beast, “People laughed at [Miller] because he was a buffoon, he was a performer, he thrived on spectacle. I’m very conscious now, looking back, that he was treated the same way that Trump was—he wasn’t taken seriously.”

Here are 21 facts that explain who Stephen Miller is.

1. The National Rifle Association was his first right-wing love.

Miller grew up in Santa Monica, a coastal city long regarded as a progressive bastion in L.A. County. A Los Angeles Times profile states Miller, along with two siblings, was raised in a “Jewish family of longtime Franklin Roosevelt Democrats.” Somewhere around eighth grade, Miller’s politics took a hard right after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, penned by National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre.

2. He dumped a childhood friend because he was Latino.

According to Jason Islas, in the summer between middle and junior high, Miller told him, “I can't be your friend anymore because you are Latino.” According to Islas, the two never spoke again, though he hasn’t lost much sleep over the demise of their friendship. “[It] didn't bother me, because the fact that Miller rejected me because I am Latino showed me he was pretty much worthless,” he told Univision.

3. He was the ' best-known and least-liked conservative activist' in his liberal high school.

Miller was in the racial and political minority at Santa Monica High, where 30 percent of students were Latino, 12 percent black and 5 percent Asian. Oscar de la Torre, a counselor at the school who remains active in the community, describes Miller as being “on a crusade against liberalism and liberals.”

Student body president Justin Brownstone says Miller “enjoyed saying things that were perceived as racist. The more he offended, the happier he was.”

“He had a lot of grudges,” de la Torre told Fusion. “He didn't go out of his way to go to dances or to have girlfriends. I don't remember ever seeing him smile.”

4. He started as a right-wing mouthpiece in high school.

Julia Ioffe writes that Miller reached out to conservative talk radio host Larry Elder while at Santa Monica High, mostly to complain about pervasive liberalism in his school. He also started writing articles for the Santa Monica Lookout. Miller leveraged his role as local conservative media maven to win unilateral wars against what he imagined were lefty enemies in his school.

“Thus began a cycle that would repeat itself over and over in high school and college,” Ioffe writes, “Miller would clash with school administrators over a perceived leftist conspiracy...then escalate the conflict by taking it to a conservative talk show, infuriating the administrators but yielding a compromise in Miller’s favor.”

In a column written just after graduation, Miller noted that just “since his Junior year in High School, he [had] been a guest on local and national radio over thirty times.”

5. He spent months fighting to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance in his high school.

In a letter to local media outlet the Lookout decrying “political correctness out of control,” 16-year-old Miller complained that “our school refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms for years,” proof that “they only adhere to the liberal guidelines.” For months, Miller pestered school administrators to “bring back the pledge” even dragging the superintendent into the fight. The pledge was ultimately reinstated, though Miller moaned in his letter that “it is still only said twice a week, while policy dictates it should be said every day.”

6. Some things Miller’s classmates have said about his attitudes on race.

Charles Gould, whom the Daily News describes as Miller’s schoolmate from first to 12th grade, wrote, “[Miller] was an unabashed racist. No, I’m not being over sensitive and no, I’m not using the 'r' word where it doesn’t apply. In private conversations he was constantly making disparaging remarks about the African-American, Latino and Asian students at our school.”

Classmate Natalie Flores, who wrote a Huffington Post piece about growing up with Miller, told Univision that Miller seemed to have “an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos.” She added, “I think his big problem was the Latinos. He thought they lived off welfare.”

“[It] was not just that he targeted minority students, and played a victim on a regular basis, but was an asshole,” Ari Rosmarin, the editor of the student newspaper who now works at the ACLU, told the Daily Beast. “Most people knew him because he made it his business to have everyone hear his vile rhetoric on a regular basis.”

7. His high school writings demonstrate his budding right-wing views.

In that same letter, Miller writes, “When I entered Santa Monica High School...I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school. Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own...”

He goes on to gripe about condoms in his school (“Legally speaking, sex between minors is statutory rape”), the presence of a student LGBT group (“[W]e have a club on campus that will gladly help foster their homosexuality”), reverence for Native Americans (“excusing their scalping of frontiersmen as part of their culture”) and the lack of praise for the U.S. military (“Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School.”)

In another article he wrote, “We have all heard about how peaceful and benign the Islamic religion is. But, no matter how many times you say that, it cannot change the fact that millions of radical Muslims would celebrate your death for the simple reason that you are Christian, Jewish or American.”

Here’s what he used for his senior yearbook quote, citing Teddy Roosevelt: “There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”

Oscar de la Torre, his former high school counselor, says Miller frequently claimed that because he—a white male—didn’t experience racism or sexism, students of color were making it up. “He didn’t believe the oppression existed,” de la Torre told the Times. “This guy is 17 years old, and it’s like listening to someone who’s 70 years old—in the 1930s.”

During a summit to address African American and Latino issues, Miller showed up with the message that the room was delusional and he knew better. “He wanted to sabotage us,” de la Torre told the Times. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.” (In a column about the meeting, Miller would later indicate the real problem wasn't racism but “leftist victim mentality.”)

9. He was once booed off the stage for making a racist joke about the school janitors.

While running for student council, Miller made a speech complaining about having to pick up his garbage when there were janitors for that. The incident, which survives in the video below, was funny because the janitors were black and brown people who got paid almost nothing to pick up garbage. Get it? Haha, right?

“It was a racist remark because we all knew that our janitors were people of color,” Flores told Fusion.

“He was booed unanimously by the student body off the stage. People were disgusted,” Rosmarin, of the ACLU, told the Daily Beast. “That kind of incident with the janitorial staff—everyone, no matter what your background is, understands why that is an awful thing to say.”

(A bit of aughts trivia: the winner of that election was Mark Hunter, the guy behind the Cobrasnake party photo empire.)

10. He attended Duke University, where people remember him, though not fondly.

Here is how Miller was recently described by John Burness, the former senior vice president of public affairs and government relations at Duke: “He’s the most sanctimonious student I think I ever encountered. He seemed to be absolutely sure of his own views and the correctness of them, and seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking. Incredibly intolerant.”

A college classmate told the New York Times that at a freshman orientation event, he introduced himself by announcing, “My name is Stephen Miller, I am from Los Angeles, and I like guns.”

11. In college, he greatly expanded his portfolio of right-wing hate pieces .

In a column lamenting “multiculturalism” at Duke and other colleges, Miller listed all the cool things that make America great:

In another article, Miller accused Maya Angelou of “racial paranoia” and said her “legendary wisdom” amounted to “tired, multicultural clichés.” Another piece finds Miller finally breaking the right wing’s longstanding silence on the liberal media, asking why there aren’t any movies “about the evils of the Islamic holy war, the merits of capitalism…[o]r, dare I say it, a movie with a positive take on the Bush administration?”

For good measure, Miller also gives voice to the Angry Adult Virgin Lobby, noting that “shows like Queer As Folk, The ‘L’ Word, Will & Grace and Sex and the City, all do their part to promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values.”

12. He helped found and lead a campus group called the Terrorism Awareness Project.

CNN reports Miller served as “national campus coordinator, president, and co-founder” of the group, launched by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. (Horowitz is a vocally anti-black, anti-Muslim xenophobe and Zionist.) The project claimed its mission was to end “the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country as it attempts to defend itself in a time of terror." Miller promoted events like "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”—which didn’t catch on, for some reason—and videos with gross titles like The Islamic Mein Kampf. He also tried to get other college newspapers to run ads, like this one, which was reportedly designed by Richard Spencer. When colleges turned them down, Miller took his case to the only show that would have him, “Fox & Friends.” You can watch that appearance; note that Miller was still using his real voice, not his now-famous King of the D&D Virgins voice.

13. He palled around with white supremacist and recently punched neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.

When Miller was an undergrad and Spencer was working on a Ph.D. he was too racist to finish (no really, he dropped out to found a racist “think tank”), the two became buddies as members of the Duke Conservative Union. Together, they worked on an event featuring Peter Brimelow, founder of the virulently xenophobic VDARE and a notable hate-scene fixture with his very own SPLC page. Spencer told the Daily Beast he was a “mentor” to Miller, saying he “spent a lot of time with him at Duke...I hope I expanded his thinking.”

Spencer, who has lauded Miller as “very bold and strong,” said ahead of the election, “It's funny no one's picked up on the Stephen Miller connection. I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one's talked about this because I don't want to harm Trump."

For the record, Miller has said the two were merely members of the same club and that they fell out of touch after graduation.

14. Another white nationalist is also a big fan, as is David Duke.

In a piece titled “Stephen Miller is David Duke’s Favorite Jew,” Forward picks up recent tweets from the former Klansman applauding Miller. “I can’t help it, I like this guy,” Duke states in one message.

Jared Taylor, whose anti-black output was a favorite of racist murderer Dylann Roof, reportedly also namechecked Miller. The Washington Post points to a post by Taylor which notes that Trump’s lack of white racial consciousness is helped by “men close to him — Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller — who may have a clearer understanding of race, and their influence could grow.”

15. He worked for noted racist Jeff Sessions.

After a stint working for Michelle Bachmann, Miller took a communications job with Senator Jeff Sessions in 2009. Sessions' office—where Miller could help the racist, xenophobic sausage get made—helped elevate his visibility among conservatives, though initially, he was known mostly for his emails (see #16).

Politico notes the up-and-comer played a pivotal role in crushing the Gang of Eight’s 2013 bipartisan immigration bill. The outlet points out that “when the bill passed the Senate...Miller literally wrote the 23-page handbook that House members were given on how to fight the deal.” As you may already know, after being deemed too racist for the federal bench in the 1980s, Sessions was judged perfectly racist for the Trump administration and confirmed attorney general.

16. As you might imagine, he is a super annoying emailer.

A recent New York Times article describes Miller as “a man whose emails were, until recently, considered spam by many of his Republican peers.” The Times goes on to say:

As a top aide to Mr. Sessions, the conservative Alabama senator, Mr. Miller dispatched dozens and dozens of bombastic emails to congressional staff members and reporters in early 2013 when the Senate was considering a big bipartisan immigration overhaul. Mr. Miller slammed the evils of “foreign labor” and pushed around nasty news articles on proponents of compromise, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. One exhausted Senate staff member, forwarding a Miller-gram to a reporter at the time, wrote: “His latest. And it’s only 11:45 a.m.”

17. On the campaign trail, he warmed up the crowds for Trump.

Miller’s job was to toss small bits of red meat for the audience to gnaw on while they waited for Trump to hit the stage and throw them the rest of the bloody carcass. In the video below, shot at a rally in Wisconsin, he rails against “foreign workers,” telling the audience they’re “competing against you, and your children, and your grandchildren, and your brothers, and sisters and neighbors for jobs. Low-wage foreign workers being brought in to take your place at less pay.”

He talks about “uncontrolled migration from the Middle East,” and “illegal immigrants being arrested...for the most heinous crimes imaginable,” and hails Trump as the candidate “who will protect our cities, who will protect our communities, who will save our families.”

18. He wrote Trump’s RNC and 'America First' inauguration speeches.

Miller is reportedly responsible for penning Trump’s ominous RNC speech, in which he declared, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”

While there was the option of going lighter for the inauguration—some presidents do not use the minutes after being sworn in to share a vision of the country as a dystopian hellscape—Miller stuck with fearmongering:

"Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

19. He’s considered the brain behind the travel ban.

Though he denies it, Miller is believed to have written a significant portion of the travel ban, with some help from Steve Bannon and congressional aides sworn to contractual secrecy. Multiple sources have reported that the Steves have refused to consult with other agencies that might have necessary insights or legal expertise, leading to disastrous rollouts. In order to counter the negative press around the Muslim ban (we’re calling it what Trump calls it, because that’s what it is), Miller was sent on a Sunday morning press tour last weekend.

20. Infamous quotes from Miller’s tour of the Sunday morning shows last weekend.

“Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

“The president’s powers...represent the apex of executive authority.”

“We will have unquestioned military strength beyond anything anybody can imagine.”

“That’s the story we should be talking about and I’m prepared to go on any show anywhere anytime and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent.”

21. His family is mostly not proud of him.

Buzzfeed News rounded up posts from Miller’s extended family, who seem not particularly keen on his new role. His mother’s brother, David Glosser, posted on the wall of a local media outlet, “With all familial affection I wish Stephen career success and personal happiness; however I cannot endorse his political preferences. I am not a Trump supporter.”

Glosser's letter, which is fairly long, goes on from there:

Mr. Trump is trying to sell you something...He sells fear of immigrants, contempt of our daughters, sisters, and wives, and sows discord and anger. He knows the dictator’s disgraceful sales tricks of challenging the integrity of democratic elections, he finds an unpopular outside group to blame our troubles on, cooks up false electoral fraud theories if he doesn’t get his way, threatens and bullies his opponents, and tells us that he is the only one that can lead the nation ahead. He’s trying to sell you something, and it’s not a good product. For the first time in my memory a major American political party’s presidential candidate has proposed that laws and regulations be established solely on the basis of a person’s religion and ethnic background. The legitimization of this as a basis of serious political discussion is a terrible step into darkness. Remember, what goes around comes around. If today it’s “them,” then tomorrow it may be you.

Finally, my nephew and I must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know.”

Another family member, commenting on the post, wrote, “At least he [Miller] doesn’t share our last name.”

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

Fifteen professors — ethics specialists who work at such schools as Georgetown, Duke and Yale — want the D.C. Bar to sanction President Trump’s aide for violations of government ethics rules and “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

Kellyanne Conway looks like time for some dis-barment proceedings... geee did not know she was a lawyer... amazing how the media hides that.

Quote:

This isn’t the first time she’s drawn ire from the academic community. Her alma mater Trinity Washington University had this to say about their 1989 graduate:

The president of Trinity Washington University, though, has had plenty to say about one of its graduates. “Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway, Trinity Class of 1989, has played a large role in facilitating the manipulation of facts and encouraging the grave injustice being perpetrated by the Trump Administration’s war on immigrants among many other issues,” Patricia McGuire wrote recently.

Kellyanne Conway, a graduate of George Washington University Law School, may have some more professional troubles coming her way. The Washington Post reports a group of law professors from across the country joined forces to say the President’s adviser should be sanctioned.

The letter, filed with the office that handles misconduct by members of the D.C. Bar, said Conway should be sanctioned for violating government ethics rules and “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” the letter says.

The 15 professors, who specialize in legal ethics, cite several incidents, including a television interview in which Conway made the “false statement that President Barack Obama had ‘banned’ Iraqi refugees from coming into the United States for six months following the ‘Bowling Green Massacre,’ ” and the use of her position to endorse Ivanka Trump products.

“We do not file this complaint lightly,” the professors said in their filing. “We believe that, at one time, Ms. Conway, understood her ethical responsibilities as a lawyer and abided by them. But she is currently acting in a way that brings shame upon the legal profession.”
The five-page document addresses the now-infamous “alternative facts” phenomenon. You can read a copy of the complaint letter here. Here’s one of my favorite parts.

As many prominent commentators have pointed out, the phrase“alternative facts” is especially dangerous when offered by the President’s counselor. Moreover, “alternative facts’ are not facts at all; they are lies.

well he is no longer a permanent member on the national Security council. what idiot thought he belonged there...

his background he makes money from residuals from a comedy show he wrote for. how impressive is he... such deep experience. such intellectual accomplishments._________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

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